Sotomayor: ‘I live in frustration’ on court
WASHINGTON − Saying she is “tired” and “working harder than I ever have,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday offered a rare glimpse of life on a bench that is dominated by conservatives.
”I live in frustration,” Sotomayor, 69, told students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, according to media reports. “Every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.”
Sotomayor’s remarks were an unusual look at the dynamics of working on a Supreme Court controlled by justices appointed by Republican presidents − including three appointed by former President Donald Trump. The path ahead for justices like Sotomayor, who have had long tenures on the Supreme Court, is particularly noteworthy in an election year where the next president may be in a position to further shape the court’s direction.
Sotomayor, appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2009, is one of three justices on the high court who have been appointed by Democrats. They often offer pointed and sometimes emotional dissents on controversial decisions, like the 2022 abortion ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Last week, the three liberals on the court criticized the decision to allow the nation’s first execution of a death row inmate with nitrogen gas.
Sotomayor told her audience at Berkeley that she is committed to giving voice to the court’s liberal perspective. “I have to get up in the morning and keep fighting,” she said.
The court is considering major issues related to gun and abortion rights, social media and whether former President Donald Trump is disqualified from returning to the White House.
It is also still feeling the aftershocks of its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and could throw out another longstanding opinion this term to curtail federal agencies regulatory authority.
During the recent oral arguments on that issue, Sotomayor questioned the challengers’ contention that the courts should have greater power to reject a federal agency’s rule. Why is that the best approach when the Supreme Court routinely splits over a decision? she asked.
“I happen, when I dissent, to think the others got it wrong,” she said to laughter in the court. “And they often do.”
On Monday, she was asked by Berkeley’s law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, how to respond to students who are discouraged about the Supreme Court.
“What choice do you have but to fight the good fight?” she said, according to Bloomberg Law. “You can’t throw up your hands and walk away. And that’s not a choice. That’s an abdication. That’s giving up.”
The court is also getting more emergency requests. That includes a request to temporarily stop the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from considering race in its admission process.
Sotomayor, who has attributed her admission to Princeton in part to affirmative action, wrote a dissent when the court’s conservative majority last year struck down affirmative action admissions policies used by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina to diversify their campuses.
Sotomayor said that decision rolled back “decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
She recently criticized the majority’s decision to allow the nation’s first execution of a death row inmate with nitrogen gas, saying Alabama’s Kenneth Eugene Smith should have had more time to pursue legal challenges about the controversial method.
“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” she wrote in her dissent. “The world is watching.”